Well it's officially time for the NBA Playoffs and things seemed to work out much better than the Boston Celtics could have anticipated. Why is this, because we're the number one seed in the Eastern Conference! If you told me at the start of the season, this team was the best in the east, I would've laughed at you, but wow am I pleasantly surprised. With being the number 1 seed, you get to reap the rewards such as not dealing with Cleveland until the conference finals, and having to deal with Washington or Atlanta in the second round instead of Toronto, and finally the biggest of them all HOME COURT ADVANTAGE in the east playoffs (30-11 home record, 2nd best in the east). Our first match up comes against the Chicago Bulls who are the 8 seed with a 41-41 record and a 16-25 road record and what I'll be doing in this article is breaking this series down offensively and defensively.

Offense: First lets start by taking a look at each team offensively. During the regular season the Celtics had the better offense especially at home ranking 7th in the league averaging 108 points per game and 109.5 points at home. Whereas the Chicago Bulls rank 23rd averaging 102.87 points per game and 102 points per game on the road. The Celtics also shoot better than the Bulls too with a 45.54 Field Goal Percentage and a 35.94 from 3 point land whereas the Bulls shoot 44.33 percent from the field and 34 percent 3 point percentage too. Even against each other this season too, the Celtics are better too if you take a look at this chart:

Based off these numbers, the advantage for offense goes to the Celtics. The Celtics are much more of threat to go off than the Bulls and that's because this team has more options than the Bulls do. The Celtics can rely on Thomas, Horford, Bradley, Crowder as their main guys to score and others will follow. Whereas the Bulls can only rely on Jimmy Butler. When you go back and look at their most recent match up from 3/12, the Bulls got embarrassed because they had no offense. The leading scorers for them were Robin Lopez and Denzel Valentine with 13 points. With Butler shooting terribly in this game too, the Bulls struggled and that's what will happen in this series too if Butler can't get things going. Advantage: Celtics

Defense: The Bulls were the higher ranked defensive team this season having a defensive rating of 104.5 whereas the Celtics were 12th with 105.5 This seems fitting too because going down the stretch the Celtics had some questionable defensive games giving up 114 to the Cavs and 123 to the Hawks. These games were the worst games for this team too and only happened a couple weeks ago which isn't a comforting feeling. Plus a theme with this defense too is they love getting big leads, but also enjoy making games interesting when they really shouldn't be. The Celtics defense cannot let off the gas at all during the playoffs because in the regular season you sometimes can get away with it, but not the post season. Whereas the last couple weeks of the season, the Bulls did their job defensively if they were up big which something the Celtics couldn't seem to do. A big area in this where the Bulls have the advantage is rebounding, defense and rebounding win games, and the Bulls can still rebound. Sure they lost Taj Gibson at the trade deadline, but this team has players that can somewhat fill the void of Gibson including Lopez, Bobby Portis, and even Jimmy Butler. The Bulls are the much better rebounding team averaging 46.3 rebounds per game (3rd in the league) whereas the Celtics averaged 42 rebounds per game (27th in the league). Can the Celtics rebound, well of course they can, they need to be the aggressive ones on the boards which they can be because when they out rebound teams, they win those games rarely lose. I don't think the Bulls can keep up the rebounding intensity they've had for this series maybe a game or two sure, but overall defensively, the Celtics just seem to be better. Advantage: Celtics

Verdict:Celtics in 6. The Celtics just seem to be the more well-rounded team plain and simple. This team I'm sure will experience a few tense moments and maybe some self-doubt, especially against a decently talented but unfulfilled Bulls – who with two inspired weeks could bring dignity to their otherwise bad season. But Boston will have many advantages. Its amazing home court atmosphere will be huge against the poor road Bulls, and its weakness on the glass shouldn't be too be punished by Chicago as mentioned before. The Bulls rebounding suffered after the departure of Gibson. The unified Celtics hold a huge lead in terms of camaraderie and morale over the confused Bulls, and they also have the East’s leading closer in Thomas (9.8 points per fourth quarter). Though he averaged "only" 24.8 points per game against Chicago, Thomas succeeded in shooting 53.8% overall and 48.4% from the 3-point line. Thomas is at his best in the biggest moments, and he can be expected to make wise decisions against the double-teams. Plus, we all remembered what happened the last time the Celtics were a 1 seed right?